Omnibus Simulator! Nothing is quite as exciting as driving a double decker bus in Germany in 1985.
The computer game I have been waiting for has been released…
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Category Archives: computers
A sign that we are too rich…
I can’t quite wrap my head around why people would buy this game:
Really? A farming simulator? Are we so rich that there is a market for farming? What’s next, a hunter-gatherer simulator?
What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
Just last night I booted a computer using a 3.5” floppy for the first in…well, I don’t know how long. It was a bit strange to see a command prompt at A:\.
Today I saw this article, What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? It makes me feel a little old when I realize that there is good reason why people don’t know what the A:\ and B:\ drives are.
10 Facts and Thoughts
1. Sting’s Symphonicities is a pretty good album.
2. Fact: If all of the coal in the lower 48 states were mined, it would be enough coal to last 3,800 years at current U.S. consumption levels.
3. Despite what Time thinks, trade works two directions. We get benefits not only for exports, but imports improve our lives as well.
4. Andruw Jones might be worth a few million if the Yanks decide to pick him up.
5. Installing a solid state drive as your main computer drive is a fantastic upgrade
6. NOAA says 2010 tied with 2005 for warmest year in the surface temperature record
7. NASA’s surface temperature record also sets a record in 2010
8. USA drops to 9th in the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom
9. 20% of the world’s phones use Gorilla Glass made by Corning in upstate New York
10. The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb starts slow
Things I Like–Dropbox
It’s been a long time since I have written about a product that I have love. One of my favorite things is the web service Dropbox. I love Dropbox because “it just works.” Dropbox is simple—it creates a “Dropbox” folder on your computer and then automatically backs up and sync anything you put in that folder. And it does it all for free.
Before Dropbox, when I did some work at home, I either had to save the file to a USB drive and remember to take it to work, or email the document to myself. The problem is that I frequently forgot to do either of these things and found myself at work without the file I had worked on for hours at home. Now when I write a Word document at home for work, I save it to the Dropbox folder. Dropbox syncs the file to my work computer and when I get to work the file is ready to go (obviously Dropbox does the same things when I work on a personal document at work—it gets synced to my home computer).
While Dropbox is dead simple, it also is a good value for money–you get 2 gigabytes of storage for free. You can pay for more storage space or, if you use this link to sign up, you will get an extra 250 megabytes for free, plus you’ll help give me an extra 250 megabytes too.
Check out Dropbox and you could be as happy as these figures from Dropbox’s website:
Kindle v. Ipad thought of the day
The iPad is emphatically not a serious readers’ device: the only people who would genuinely consider it a Kindle killer are those for whom the idea of reading for pleasure died years ago; if it was ever alive. The people who will spout bullshit like “I read on screen all day” when what they really mean is “I read the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article I saw linked on Twitter before retweeting it; and then I repeat that process for the next eight hours while pretending to work.” That’s reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex.
Plants vs. Zombies
If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and you haven’t played Plants vs. Zombies, what is your problem? Now that I’m driving to work instead of taking the Metro I miss my metro Plants vs. Zombies time.
How to install a CanoScan N650U scanner on Vista or Windows 7
I have an Canon CanoScan N650U scanner that I use a few times a year. Canon never released Vista drivers for this scanner, using the instructions below made the scanner work on Windows 7 for me:
- Download the XP drivers from Canon’s website
- Install the drivers
- The driver didn’t install, but unzipped to C:/Temp/CanoScanCSUv571a
- Go to C:/Temp/CanoScanCSUv571a and uncompress CanoScanCSUv571a.exe
- Plug in your scanner
- Go to your device manager.
- Click on Add a Device and select the scanner
- Right click to update driver information
- Select browse my computer for driver software
- Type in: C:\Temp\CanoScanCSUv571a
- Click next and my scanner worked
Update: In the comments Paul wrote, “I used the WIA drivers, which I found here: http://www.normalgeeks.com/Canoscan_WIA.zip” I haven’t tried it, but’s worth checking out.
The Power of the Beep
Microsoft made this video to promote their Windows 7 launch parties. But Cabel Sasser re-edited it and made it sound a bit different:
You’ve Come A Long Way, Apple
The difference between the Mac Portable and the iPhone or iPod Touch (seen here) is a stunning reminder of technology’s relentless, progress. One strains your arm like a 16 pound briefcase, the other fits in your back pocket. A 16 MHZ CPU powers one, a 412-Mhz or 532-Mhz CPU powers the other. One includes one megabyte of RAM, the other includes 128 megabytes. One contains a 40MB fixed disk, the other 8,000 to 32,000 megabytes. One has a 2,400 bit-per-second phone modem, the other contains a 54,000,000 bit-per-second wireless network interface and a wireless telephone. Most staggeringly, one cost $12,667 (adjusted to 2009 dollars), and the other costs $99-$299. The difference? Twenty years.